Kingston, NY – “Earlier this year, New York State passed a version of Good Cause Eviction through the state’s budget that allows municipalities outside of New York City to opt-in. While this version leaves out thousands of upstate tenants in places where such an opt-in is unlikely, I always knew the City of Kingston would provide a glimmer of hope as one of the first localities to opt-in. I knew this because Kingston has led the state in tenant protections with the Rent Guideline’s Board historic decision to reduce rent and by passing a local version of good cause protections in 2022.

During budget negotiations, a provision I fought diligently for allows municipalities to consider local conditions when defining the exemption based on the number of units in a landlord’s portfolio – what it means to be a small landlord in New York City is not the same as what it means in Kingston. I’m thrilled that the City of Kingston has opted-into, through Local Law 5, a strong version of the law that exempts only landlords who live on the premises or own one unit.

State legislators and lawyers who argued against last minute compromises to the state’s Good Cause law strongly believe that exempting portfolio sizes at a higher number of units will lead to the law not being enforceable or effective at all because of the prevalence of landlords who hide behind multiple LLCs. Though we passed the LLC Transparency Act last year, it will be several years before a directory is created, and the directory won’t be disclosed to the public, due to changes the Governor made to the law before signing it. The only way we can ensure Kingston tenants are protected under good cause is by covering tenants with landlords who own more than one unit—and that is exactly what the Common Council has done. According to American Community Survey data, 60% of tenants in Kingston live in buildings with 1-4 units, so increasing the portfolio size exemption would have left out a significant number of renters.

The intention of the good cause law is to help stabilize neighborhoods by giving tenants a defense in court if their landlord tries to raise the rent by more than 10 percent. I commend the Kingston Common Council for taking the right step to protect tenants against price-gouging by passing Local Law 5, and I encourage other localities to follow suit.”